Drug Makers Score Early Wins as Plan Takes Shape

Drug Makers Score Early Wins as Plan Takes Shape

online.wsj.com

WASHINGTON -- The pharmaceuticals industry, which President Barack Obama promised to "take on" during his campaign, is winning most of what it wants in the health-care overhaul.

The final contours of the legislation are far from settled, but the industry, led by a onetime powerful congressman, has notched a string of victories.

Legislation expected soon in the powerful Senate Finance Committee will leave out cost-cutting steps as part of an agreement with the industry and the White House,

(visit the link for the full news article)

A state health care system that provides at least a basic level of care is a must have in the civilized world, how ever this seems to be turning out the same way the bank bail outs have where the tax payer gets robbed and the big business companies get richer and richer as a part of the deal, one of the original ideas from Obama was that cheaper drugs could be imported from countries like Canada and that the federal government would be able to negotiate with the drugs companies directly to get a better deal yet this seems to have been dropped no doubt as a result of large sums of money being used to grease palms somewhere along the way?

online.wsj.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Although I'm not siding with PhRMA, I'm not sure how we should deal with this problem.

Meanwhile, a separate Senate committee voted this week as part of its health bill to give branded biotechnology drugs at least 12 years of market exclusivity, a defeat for makers of cheaper copycat medicines. "This is the best year the drug industry has had in decades," said Nancy LeaMond of AARP, the seniors' lobby, which is seeking greater price-cutting on drugs.

It does seem reasonable to expect that drug companies should have an exclusive period because if they didn't then there would be no drug development. On the other hand, this comes at the expense of elderly people and people who are sick and dying and that doesn't seem right either.

What would you do if you were POTUS? Should the government have any say in private enterprise in the first place?

I don't have an answer to this problem.

Awesome. Big Pharma's win, we lose. Lets all celebrate!

How come I am not surprised? I despise the fact that these drug companies run this health care system.

We can't do anything about it.

I don't think there should be a drug "industry".
Scientists develop these drugs. Its these drug companies that exploit them. Then charge enormous amounts of money for cancer treatments, disease treatments, even aspirin in hospitals. Another conspiracy.

(edit to clarify)

[edit on 17-7-2009 by havok]

Originally posted by havok
Awesome. Big Pharma's win, we lose. Lets all celebrate!

How come I am not surprised? I despise the fact that these drug companies run this health care system.

We can't do anything about it.

I don't think there should be a drug "industry".
Scientists develop these drugs. Its these drug companies that exploit them. Then charge enormous amounts of money for cancer treatments, disease treatments, even aspirin in hospitals. Another conspiracy.

(edit to clarify)

[edit on 17-7-2009 by havok]

Sorry but I think that response was lazy.

Would scientists develop drugs if they weren't funded by a drug company? Maybe, maybe not - but certainly not at the rate that they do now. Having said that, I'm not sure we need all of the "new and improved" drugs that are developed.

Drug companies do charge enormous amounts for the drugs that they paid to have developed but the reason they made the investment in the first place was because of the profit. So, do you think they would make these investments if they weren't allowed to make profit from them?

As far as the hospitals, yes, that is an entirely different subject.

You can despise big pharma and make canned comments like this if you want, but all it shows is your disgust - not actual thinking on your part.

Originally posted by havok
Then charge enormous amounts of money for cancer treatments

Tell me about it, during my fathers lifetime he had cancer a total of six times, the pharmaceutical companies were charging the NHS £1500 per injection they were giving him, a total robbery. if it weren't for the NHS he would have been lucky to have survived the first lot of cancer and there would have been no way he could have gotten insurance cover for any future illnesses

Originally posted by Iamonlyhuman
Would scientists develop drugs if they weren't funded by a drug company?

A significant number of the anti cancer drugs are developed by charities like Cancer Research amongst others so yes scientists would still develop new drugs

reply to post by solidshot


But you didn't quote me in context. I said:

Originally posted by Iamonlyhuman
Would scientists develop drugs if they weren't funded by a drug company? Maybe, maybe not - but certainly not at the rate that they do now. Having said that, I'm not sure we need all of the "new and improved" drugs that are developed.

"But certainly not at the rate that they do now."

If these charities are developing anti-caner drugs, for example, at significant rates, then why are the costs still so high? Are they selling the discoveries to the drug companies? I don't know but you have to pull the string on this line of thinking in order to come up with the real reason for the exorbanant costs of drugs. You can't reasonably just hate on companies because they make profit.

Again, I'm not for big pharma but just for debate that is intelligent.

Originally posted by Iamonlyhuman


If these charities are developing anti-caner drugs, for example, at significant rates, then why are the costs still so high? Are they selling the discoveries to the drug companies?

I don't know for certain but i do suspect that they sell any discoveries to the pharma companies, and the reason the prices are so high i blatant profiteering, it probably takes them a year or two to make back the cash they invested in the R&D of a drug after that it's pure profit.

reply to post by solidshot


So, then, could charities also be implicit in drug profiteering?

reply to post by Iamonlyhuman



Certainly a possibility, certain charities do seem to be more interested in themselves more than the people they are supposed to represent, there was a report a while back stating that the charities in the UK seem to spend over two thirds of their income on things like tv ad's trying to sponge more cash off of joe public. shouldn't this cash be invested in the people the charity is supposed to represent instead?

Originally posted by Iamonlyhuman
Although I'm not siding with PhRMA, I'm not sure how we should deal with this problem.

Meanwhile, a separate Senate committee voted this week as part of its health bill to give branded biotechnology drugs at least 12 years of market exclusivity, a defeat for makers of cheaper copycat medicines. "This is the best year the drug industry has had in decades," said Nancy LeaMond of AARP, the seniors' lobby, which is seeking greater price-cutting on drugs.

It does seem reasonable to expect that drug companies should have an exclusive period because if they didn't then there would be no drug development. On the other hand, this comes at the expense of elderly people and people who are sick and dying and that doesn't seem right either.

What would you do if you were POTUS? Should the government have any say in private enterprise in the first place?

I don't have an answer to this problem.

The quickest way to aleviate drug costs is to reduce patent coverage time. Generic drugs could be manufactured cheaply. Drug companies often re-patent drugs,they combine two drugs and gain a new patent.
We pay extremely high prices for drugs, They relate the cost to new research. The Government partially funds much of their research anyway.
Seems like we always get the shaft.

Oh big, We didn't see this comin down the poo tube! This crap is gettin realy old. Lets all just stop going to work and let them find another way to pay for this without the working people!!!!because we all know how is going to foot the bill. The PTB will have to bail all of us out because then WE would be "to big to fail"

reply to post by uspatriot109


Lol... the only people doing bailouts is us. TPTB only tell us we have to do it and then do it for us - at our expense.

Sheesh, for those drug-company(or should I say "Drug-Cartel"?) lobbyists alone they should re-enstate execution at dawn. Friggin kleptocrats AGAIN they are cheating The Average American out of fair, affordable health-care, using their ill-gained money to sabotage everything..... Bastards, sociopathic a$$holes. They don't give a d@mn about fighting the crisis, or Americans for that matter..they only care to be able to leave the ship before it sinks..now their 20-bedroom mansions have plummeted in price

Come on Barack, sofar You have shown some vision.. Keep it up, and especially at something this important, or, indeed "be a one-term president"

OK, I hesitate to do this but my opinion matters to me and, vane though it may seem, I would like to offer it up for dissection.

I spent 5 years in research grants management working directly with and overseeing the cash-flow.

The financial commitment that drug companies make towards research is a tiny fraction of what the tax-payers pay. Drug development is an exasperating subject for me. I don't know what mechanics of mental gymnastics is done within the industry to make it seem like they are the only game in town. It most certainly would not have a tremendous affect if they didn't pay for research at all. Measurable, certainly, but it would not halt the research that scientists propose to do. They just wouldn't get obscenely wealthy doing it.

The Higher education industry (it is no longer an institution in most cases) is in many cases a grotesque parasite siphoning off money in indirect costs and 'backwards calculating' reimbursements to maximize revenue flow.

Never, EVER, give in to the paradigm that these people are heroes. They do NOT serve you, they serve themselves. The intentional linkage of the reduction of human suffering and the improvement of the human condition by a measure of profit is a dehumanizing and ill-conceived strategy. In the end it minimizes the service to increase the profit and thus marginalizes the effectiveness of the medical arts.

It was ALWAYS supposed to be about HEALING, not profit. The moment that changed, the moment financial institutions and debt instruments got involved with research and education, we began to lose the personal physicians who knew your name, or would actually 'engage' the medical system as your advocate. Now we have meat mechanics, and drug pushers.

That's where commercialism took the medical community. And there are always those who seem to believe that the paradigm is as they project it. Medicine costs virtually nothing to produce, tiny fractions of a penny. The profit spread from the product over the cost is orders of magnitude larger, and based on marketeering and game theory.

Sadly, even so, this industry has been caught many, MANY times almost literally poisoning their 'patients' and chalking it up to statistically inevitable 'negative results'. Check into the history. You know, the one that's not in the commercially-provided media. It's there for all to see.

Ultimately, I must confess that these are generalizations. But I'll be damned if you can find me any exceptions.

[edit on 17-7-2009 by Maxmars]

What a sad situation You scetched out..

Michael Moore's "SICKO" has some extra features that basically state the same things You mention->Healthcare should NEVER be about money making and always about alleviating suffering and promote healing. Never-ever about profit-margin and mis-using funds..
The money-mongerers seem to be without shame, remorse ,or any semblance of humanity. They learned me what "hatred"meant,for I hate them with all my heart&soul...

reply to post by diakrite


Don't bother hating them, it's a waste of energy. The have engaged in creating the culture they exploit. Our job has to be to remain human, despite their idiocy and grotesque vanity.

Why is anybody surprise, I wonder, why?

This health care bill will impose more tax burden on the working class not only on the so call rich by government standards.

We all are going to pay for it, rich and poor.

And as for the big pharma win, what do you expect when most of the funding to campaign in this nation comes from them, and why so surprise when you all know that in this nation big interest and private interest are the ones that make the bills that congress pass while filling their pockets with money.

Wake up people we have been scammed, one difference, see is people that knows this, but when you see others making comment of how god send this bill is for them I feel sorry for the lack of sight.

This nothing more than another way to scam all of us.

reply to post by Maxmars


What would you do if you were "king for a day" in dealing with the problem at hand?